Dodgur:

Matthew 5:45 “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” There are many things to be said on this issue but the bottom line is this, good and bad things happen to good and bad people. Is this the will of God no, is this in accordance to the will of God yes. At first this seems like a contradiction but it is not at all and can be explained simply. I believe that C.S. Lewis gave an example of this in his book Meer Christianity when speaking of free will but I believe it will work fine here as well. He said that a mother tells her children to keep their room clean, wanting them to do so. But when she inters their room and sees that it has not been done she is upset. Now it was her desire that they clean the room but it was her will that they do it without her overseeing that allowed it to become dirty. There for, it is possible for something to be both in accordance to the will of God while not being what he desires to happen. The world is in a bad way, good things happen to bad people and bad things to good ones. Satan runs around seemingly doing whatever he wills and where is God? He’s right where He’s always been and that is everywhere. How can this be if he is a loving God for there to be heart ache? Because the world is full of sin and yes Satan is allowed to do a lot of bad things in it. Who brought this sin on us? We did from the first person to the last we all sin. Does this mean that only the sinful die? No we all know that is not the case. Does this mean God is evil? No, that is a contraction in terms at the least and completely wrong all together. Is God a sates? That is about the most ignorant thing one could say, how and why would God worship Satan and thus be a sates?

weird rationalizations as usual from the xtians,

The logic in what I said came from a British author from the early 20th century, as I stated in my post, therefore you comment is meaningless and does not have an argument beyond simple contradiction for the point of contradiction

Dodgur:

The logic in what I said came from a British author from the early 20th century, as I stated in my post, therefore you comment is meaningless and does not have an argument beyond simple contradiction for the point of contradiction

my point is the above statements r logically contradictory cuz how can god not wish for something and at d same time be his will or in accordance to his will?eeh?

Ok I’ll try to do justice to what Mr. Lewis wrote as I cannot find the direct quote.

Let us use people and free will; I think this will work easier.

God in order to not have a bunch of toy soldiers running about gave us free will. In doing so he gave us the opportunity to not obey him, and even not believe in him. Now if you were God and you man people, out of love wouldn’t you want them to love you? Sure, thing is if they had no choice than it’s not really love. So by giving us a chance to choose to believe in Him and to love Him the love we show is real. But on the other hand we have now the chance to never believe in Him at all nor love Him. This is not what He wants, He wants us to all know and love Him as He loves and knows us. But it was His will that allowed us to not believe in Him at all. Therefore, it is not what He wants but still in accordance to His will.

Does that express my point better?

AM TRYING HARD TO RATIONALISE YOUR STATEMENTS,
it is clear dat if he is perfect god he shud have made perfect creatures who love one anoda , 4get this free will thing
y wont he just make the heart of man kind since he is all powerful as u xtians say?eeh?
the concept of free will has and will always be d best way xtians will rationalise things ,
and oh! how come he didnt give jesus free will to avoid been crucified since he gave ALL creature this free will,
after all jesus said if it is ur will let this cup passover from me, but it sure didnt,
so y didnt christ have a choice?

If God made us love Him or one another than that is not our choice therefore it is not free will. The reason Christians use free will is because it is truth; it is a cornerstone belief of Christianity. If people didn’t have a choice than no one would be accountable for anything; you could not say that anything Hitler did was wrong because he couldn’t choose not to. Jesus most certainly did have a choice he chose to do it. When he said “if it is you’re will” He said He is the servant of the will of God. Did Jesus want to suffer and die? No, that’s part of being human no one wants to suffer but it was because of his love that He choose to do it anyways. That was part of why he came was to show us that you do have the choice do to right even when you seemingly do not benefit from it.
Our hearts are kind, yours, mine, his, hers but that not all there is to it. People get hurt and hurt causes us to hurt others. That’s why Jesus taught love, love everyone no matter what they do. That’s what he wants us to do that’s what Christians are called to do. Are we perfect? No. Are we even good at it…. Well some are better than others but…. We (hopefully) try to be. Truth be told I at first wanted to fight with you. When I read many things you said and saw the distaste you have for my beliefs my instinct is to attack. But that’s my human side, when I thought about it before just acting I calmed down and remembered that that is the very reason I often didn’t like Christians before I was one and even after. But we are all human. I like talking to others and sharing my beliefs. I don’t hate you because you don’t agree; I don’t wish harm to you or anything like that. Now this is not love to the end that God has it for us all but it is a brotherly love. If more people showed even this much love I think a lot of the problems people have with each other and people have with Christians would resolve. But this is a choice we must make every day and not all of us do so.

I am not a proponent of hate and i dont judge pple by their race sex,or religion,
but it is a free worlds where i can exercise my freedom of expression in forums like these ,
it is not to mock anyone BUT to challenge the fondational beliefs we have and trash it out with intelligent discusions dat doesnt mean
if u dont believe in my opinions i will insult or hurt you, dats primitive way of thinkin especially an old testament way of the jews
it might not sound cool with you ,but reality is that the OT stories r filled with atrocities like the jews killing anyone in the land they want2 possess
and claimin it was god dat gives them victory over their enemies,
but dat is subject to different interpretations, anyway u look at it it is brutality and barbaric like muslims killing xtians in this present day,becos dey dont belief in islam.

That is the exact reason God (Jesus) taught love above all things.
1 Corinthians 13:13
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Matthew 22:36-40
36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'[a] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[b] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

is it now safe to say that the god of the old testament is different from Jesus whom u christians claim is d same
as th OT god?
I mean why the sudden change from war and brutality in the OT to love .love love in the NT?, and u xtians just dont see it?
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT GNOSTICS WERE ACTUALLY CORRECT?

blackcypha:

is it now safe to say that the god of the old testament is different from Jesus whom u christians claim is d same
as th OT god?
I mean why the sudden change from war and brutality in the OT to love .love love in the NT?, and u xtians just dont see it?
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT GNOSTICS WERE ACTUALLY CORRECT?

My friend, the Gnostics are too X-files for my liking but you are right, this game has been played since the dawn of time and the core problem (for God i.e) is that he gave man FREE-WILL or the Devil; not having free-will of his own, tempted man who (the usually obedient creation) exposed himself to self-consciousness and freedom to think. and throughout history; God has tried all sorts to rid man off Free-will, Hence the flood, and the scattering of the nation of united people who tried to build the tower of Babel and various machinations to bring this apparently contentious trait in man to order. His sample culture (the Israelites) are a key example of the enduring superiority of Free-will over conformity and dogma. they undeservedly warranted God's favor, disobeyed him too many times to count and even through all the brutal and grueling and utterly genocidal approaches to reigning their free-will under his command, they still stick their thumbs in his behind refusing to believe that his son Jesus The Messiah has left the building.

This new laissez-faire approach is the exact opposite of the authoritarian blend of the OT that did not work by the way and cost us a whole planet drowned and one soon to be consumed by fire.

It is one that is less costlier to implement for one thing. imagine the logistics and planning involved in flooding the earth, drowning the Egyptians, feeding a nation on manna then sending snakes to bite them and organizing military attacks against them when they absolutely exercise their free-will and abandoning them when it mattered the most. on the contrary, this new approach outsources the job of controlling free-will to RELIGION and boy has it worked wonders, you can imagine the growth rate of pious, unquestioning and totally obedient persons we have on the planet today, if worked right, Christians worldwide can pull nations out of a recession one nation at a time by donating 10% of their income to a worthy cause.

Lagerwhenindoubt- I’m trying to understand what you are saying but you have some things wrong and others are just hard to fallow. It sounds as though you are saying you think we have free will but that God is trying to take it away from us, and that Satan had no free will. Let’s just start out with the easy one, Satan did, does and will always have free will all angels do that’s how he rebelled. He is known (among other names) as the cursed one. He wouldn’t be cursed if he was fallowing orders. Two, if God did want us to have free will he could always take it… He’s God He kinda could do whatever He wants. The only way we could have free will is that He gave it to us. Therefore, He is not trying to take it from us He wants us to live a certain way.

Blackcypha- I am by no way saying that God is a different God than the Old Testament they are one and the same. Jesus is God he was there the whole time just as the Holy Spirit was, things were different back then for different reasons. Let’s just get some of them out right quick, he spoke to us through Angles (among other things)this is all fine and great but now he have the Holy Ghost (ie a direct line to God) this is also why we don’t need to talk to the priest and they in turn talk to God. Jesus was sent as a sacrifice the perfect sacrifice therefore we no longer give burnt offerings (Jews don’t either but that’s for a wholly different reason, it has to do with their temple… its long I can go into it if ya want me to. The Jews are no longer the only people of God because Jesus came to everyone. It’s not that’s Jesus omitted everything before (which is where I’m sure it looks like I’m leading) He fulfilled something humans cant no matter how willing they are to try, to live a perfect life. Christians are under a new covenant one made possible by grace.

Let’s show it this way. You seem to have read the Bible so you should get where I’m going here.

O T God, at the Jews requests, picked leaders for the Jews from the Jews. To do this he picked the “best” of them but in the end they turned out to be crap right? David had a guy killed so he could sleep with his wife. Moses asked God to pick another. Aaron, the first high priest, forged the golden calf when Moses was getting the Ten Commandments. It goes on like that, point is people are not perfect even the best of us.
N T Jesus comes, says EVERYONE WHO BEILIEVES IN ME WILL BE SAVED. He pikes everyone, poor, tax collectors, rich, women, children, old, young, every race, the sick, the lame, the possessed, saves them all. What happens? His people kill Him and He comes back. Now who is thought of as one of the best of all the apostles? Paul. Formally known as Saul, of the Pharisees, the sect that had Jesus killed and the best Christian killer of them all. Jesus (after he rose from the dead) came to Saul and showed him He was the Son of God. Saul, now Paul becomes one of the greatest leaders of Christians ever.

What does this all mean?

OT Even the best of us are not good enough.

NT Even the worst of us are good enough as long as we recognize Jesus, are forgiven (ie become Christian) and try. He loves ya dude and everyone else reading this He loves you too. The only thing he asks us to do is acknowledge Him for who He is, ask forgiveness, and try and live the way He showed us too. I know we don’t understand everything about God and we won’t, none of us, until we are with Him. But He is a loving God

@dogur forgive my drunk dribble. but i am sober now so let me explain better.

From the OT
Deuteronomy 30:15
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.

This sets the tone for judging whether God is responsible for natural disasters but let me clarify for you. there are two schools of thought on Bible verses

1: The School of Thought that believe OT and NT verses are universally applicable to all circumstances and everyone irrespective or race, creed or color. (without exception)


2: The School of Thought that believe OT is Living Under the Law and NT is Living Under The Grace and that we are no longer under the law but by special grace offered by the Death of Jesus making Salvation free to all men and free from the OT Laws. Hence the terms Old and New Covenant.

Now back to the issue at hand. I believe there are several supporting verses in the OT that proves that God indeed is the author of every destructive natural disaster ever recorded in the Bible.please see evidence below

Numbers 16:32-35
"And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation. And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also. And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense."

Exodus 12:29-30
"And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead."


I Chronicles 21:12
"Either three years' famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel, "


I Chronicles 21:14
"So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men."



II Chronicles 14:9
"And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots, "



II Chronicles 14:12
So the LORD smote the Ethiopians before Asa, and before Judah; and the Ethiopians fled.



I Samuel 6:19
"And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter."


Now all the Above are calamities instituted under Bible Law in the Old Testament,  whether you have Free-will to choose God or gods,  you will suffer the consequences of not Choosing GOD.


Now let us look at the New Covenant of Faith unto Salvation from the Death of Jesus Christ, which is meant to temper the harsh and immediate consequences of OT Law.

GOD seems a tad benevolent in the NEW TESTAMENT than the OLD TESTAMENT and we have a logical reason. If Jesus came to die for our sins so that we are not under the OT Law, then GOD will have no choice but to let democratic principles take its due course and in the end all will be Judged according to their Righteousness (NOT FAITH, BELIEF OR RELIGION)

But I ask you this, why is it important in the Old Testament to live only according to God's will (having given us the right to choose) why is he so bent on visiting death and destruction on those who decide, i want to exercise that choice you have given me and let me suffer the natural consequences,  We often talk about how Allah has such a violent and murderous streak evident in the instruction he gives his followers and we never seem to question the exact same violent and murderous streak we see in the Christian Faith,  I ask questions and it seems this sort of reasoning will make you enemies with coreligionists (people who take religion and its practice to heart but not its message)

If you give me choice, let me exercise that choice and do not punish me for making the "wrong" choice otherwise take away my ability to choose so that I am always right in you eyes,  but we see in the new testament, that is when God gives us absolute freedom to exercise that right to choose without burning us with hellish flames from heaven a few seconds later.

I hope this has cleared things up a bit 

Yes you have. The harshness you speak of is not as you said of the Christian faith it is Judaism. This seems like a simple matter but it is at the core of what you are talking about. You obviously understand the principles of old and new covenant. We always had a choice as we do now and as you said the difference is God seemed to do a lot more smoting back then right? Heres the rub, it’s a matter of obedience. Obedience does not mean you do not have the ability to choose it means you need to choose to obey. This sounds frightening to many people they think that to be free means freedom from obeying but that’s never the case. In western republics we all hold freedom, that is, just as long as we choose to obey the powers that be. It’s the same principles. I for one would not want the Government to take away my ability to choose even if the fact remains that if I choose wrong I will suffer a punishment for it.

Man can live right. This goes against what I said earlier when I said none of us are good enough; but we can. A man (or woman) can live right if we weren’t born into a fallen system, but we have a generational curse which we all share being sons of Adam. Adam and Eve could have done it and there is no account of how long it was before they fell but they could have I believe that, they were fooled. It’s that first domino that started the whole mess, God gave chance after chance and what seems at first as God giving up on people such as the flood or the division of tongues or the pelages on Egypt were chances after chances to do right. We kept disobeying. So what happened? Jesus, born not of Adam, no inherited sin, curse, or bad habits we all have. Being fully man as well as God; He did it, did what we could not, He obeyed. It is because of Him that we can live how we do now. You are right that we are under Grace and as such (even those who do not believe) are not destroyed in O T ways but, do not minimize the punishment. God is love, and as any psychologist will tell you anger and hate are not the opposite of love at all; apathy is. For Him to say don’t sin for I hate sin, does not mean He does not love. For Him to say do what you want I don’t care, would mean He does not love. We often have a problem wherein we think of God as this big happy grandpa that wouldn’t get mad at us for anything; but we must all stand before the Father one day. The punishments will be real and they will be far worse than any we have even known. For it will be something none of us can know, to be separate from God. That is something we can’t be here, for He is everywhere, but in hell the fire is the least to fear. God’s absents it the true punishment.

There is yet one more factor that I will touch on. Death is far different for us than it is for God. It is written that (2 Corinthians 5: “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” What is a loss and something awful to us is a face to face meeting for God.

Dodgur:


Blackcypha- I am by no way saying that God is a different God than the Old Testament they are one and the same. Jesus is God he was there the whole time just as the Holy Spirit was, things were different back then for different reasons.

quite funny as one of your xtian colleagues in this forum, kolaolaoye says Jesus is not God, why r xtians so contradictory with different beleifs?

Dodgur:

What does this all mean?

OT Even the best of us are not good enough.

NT Even the worst of us are good enough as long as we recognize Jesus, are forgiven (ie become Christian) and try. He loves ya dude and everyone else reading this He loves you too. The only thing he asks us to do is acknowledge Him for who He is, ask forgiveness, and try and live the way He showed us too. I know we don’t understand everything about God and we won’t, none of us, until we are with Him. But He is a loving God

so i can say dat your God changed from harsh to lenient but u still sing dat song in church dat says God never changes and cannot change, how do you reconcil this?becos if natural disasters r caused by God  for man!s disobedience then it wont be just to alow it to kill the just and unjust eeh?

WHO CAUSES DISASTERS?
GOD OR THE DEVIL?
IF U SAY D DEVIL THEN GOD IS NOT IN CONTROL OF THE WORLD AND DATS QUITE AMUSING FOR AN ALL POWERFUL BEING NOT TO BE IN CHARGE OF WHAT HE CREATED, IF U SAY GOD THEN HE IS PROBABLY NOT GOOD ALL THE TIME AS CHRISTIANS PROFESS, CUZ AINT NOTHING GOOD IN DESTRUCTION AND SORROWS DAT BEFALL HUMANITY WENEVA EARTHQUAKES OR HURRICANES HIT US HARD!SO PLEASE CAN SUM1 TELL ME WHO CALLS THE SHOT ON THIS, AND PLEASE DONT TELL ME THEY R NATURAL , BECUZ CHRISTIANS SAY NOTHING HAPPENS BY ACCIDENT: HENCE THE THEORY OF CAUSE AND EFFECT .
I THROW THIS QUESTION TO THE XTIANS PUNDITS IN DA HOUSE

This Poo is serious.

Shiit just got real!

ya n am enjoying it,

Lagerwhenindoubt said it very well. It is a matter of grace vs law. It’s not a matter of lenient that would imply that He is simply letting people off the hook. The question about disasters and whatnot is that God brought them for disobedient but after Jesus lived a perfect life and died for ALL of us we are now under his grace.

Now about Christians having different beliefs, were people dude, no one believes everything exactly the same. Saying that Jesus is not God is not Christian though that person is very confused. The “church” is not perfect it can’t be because it is run by people. Now people want to defend what they believe and by doing that blindly (when something is contradictory) causes problems. Also, it’s not like to be a Christian you have to earn a degree. All that I know I have taken apon myself to learn, if someone chooses not to delve into the Bible and learn they can have beliefs that don’t line up right out of ignorance of the word. God is perfect, we are not. That’s the bottom line.

May I ask a personal question? (I’m going to now regardless cuz I don’t feel like waiting.) What is your interest in God? At first I thought you just wanted to pick fights and try and make ignorant people look stupid, but you seem to have more of a knowledge base than most people which have that goal. This is not a set up for an attack or anything I am just wondering, so I hope you respond in kind.

i presume u wanna know why i ask this questions, it is not to make anyone look silly but to make u reason more logically as a rational being,

Dodgur:




May I ask a personal question? (I’m going to now regardless cuz I don’t feel like waiting.) What is your interest in God? At first I thought you just wanted to pick fights and try and make ignorant people look silly, but you seem to have more of a knowledge base than most people which have that goal. This is not a set up for an attack or anything I am just wondering, so I hope you respond in kind.

I can respect that.

am happy you undrestand my position now,